The Priest (5 page)

“Eat.” The guard dropped his food in front
of him.

Mauricio wasn’t hungry. Since the three
meals a day he had been receiving weren’t large, he should have
been starving. He had even lost weight. But the impending death
sentence wasn’t doing miracles for his appetite. He sat on the
floor and ate what he could, anyway. There was no point in arguing
with a guard. The gooey porridge stuck in his throat, and he
choked.

“Drink.” The guard promptly poured some
water in a metal bowl.

How humane of you
, Mauricio thought
while drinking the water from the bowl. He didn’t give her the
satisfaction to gulp it. He had very few things left in his life,
but one of those was pride. He fervently hoped that when the moment
came, he could withstand torture with the same spirit. By the time
he had finished with his meal, Mauricio was so nervous that his
stomach started clenching.

“I think you are refreshed enough. Back to
work.” The guard yanked his chain and dragged him outside and into
the hallway again.

“Move, idiot. And to think that the little
brat needs
you
!” The guard seemed truly annoyed with
Mauricio. He was too taken aback by her last words to pay any
attention to her mood. The guard didn’t feel sympathetic to his
woolgathering and kicked him in the shin. He howled in pain; she
had been careful to hit him with the reinforced tip of her
boot.

Heavens forbid any more personal contact,
like a sane, old-fashioned slap.

“I warned you,” the guard said, satisfied
that the slave was finally moving at her pace.

But, I haven’t said anything!
He
remembered the woman’s earlier threat.

She opened a door and let Mauricio in. “Go
and do what you are supposed to do. You know the drill.” The guard
took a last, disgusted look at him and then closed the door behind
her.

"At least they need me for something,"
Mauricio said under his breath. He gave a brief look at the room
and then sat on the plastic chair waiting for him in the corner.
The familiar transparent cup was there as well. Mauricio shook his
head in disbelief.
What is that supposed to mean?
He thought
about several scenarios and came out with one that was at least
plausible. The women needed him for one last deposit. The fact
remained that the President’s daughter had been mentioned, again.
Mauricio couldn’t find any possible explanation for that girl
needing him for anything. She was the purest of the pure breeds.
And pure breeds only used sementals to conceive fathered women.
But, now that he was thinking about it and connecting the dots—the
plump guard, the nurses, the doctor—all of them had hinted at some
sort of connection between the brat, as they called her, and him.
It was true that he had only heard bits and pieces of scattered
conversations, but the fact that he was still alive kind of
validated his current train of thoughts. But he realized the little
he knew and thought he understood about the world he lived in was
probably wrong. Loud tapping on the door startled Mauricio, who was
far away from completing his task.

“The Priestess doesn’t have time to waste,”
the guard yelled.

“Give me a moment,” Mauricio grunted back,
but kept his voice low. His mind was spinning with ideas, one
wilder than the next, and his stomach was still painfully clenched.
He still didn’t know what plans they had for him. How was he
supposed to fill the blasted cup, if he couldn’t muster the right
frame of mind?

“Done yet?” The guard was pounding on the
door, again.

“I can’t,” Mauricio finally said, loud
enough this time to be heard outside.

“What do you mean you can’t? The Priestess
is waiting for you!” The guard opened the door with an angry kick.
“Do it now! I order you.” The woman’s face was becoming red at an
alarming rate.

“I can’t,” Mauricio repeated.
What are
you, deaf and stupid?

“I will kill you for disobeying me—” The
guard impulsively took her gun from the holster and aimed at
him.

“Stop!” someone outside the door said. The
guard froze when she heard the imperious voice.

“Did you forget my orders?”

“Apologies, Your Holiness. I was only trying
to teach him a lesson.” The guard turned around to face the
Priestess, who was now towering over her.

“I explicitly said that I wanted this
semental unharmed. Did I, or did I not?” The Priestess looked
stern. “You have been working with them for a lifetime, supposedly.
Don’t you know a thing or two about their flawed physiology?” The
Priestess asked.

The guard cowered under the woman’s cold
stare. “I thought he was just wasting your precious time, Your
Holiness. Please, accept my apologies, again,” she whispered,
kneeling on the floor.

It suits you well, you bitch
, he
thought, forgetting for a moment his own predicament.

“Listen well, all of you,” the Priestess
looked outside the door, where a few guards were waiting for her
orders. “Sementals should be treated differently from the other
slaves.
This
semental in particular,
must
be treated
differently from the others. Are we clear?” She paused to let the
information sink in. “Are we clear?” the Priestess repeated,
raising her already booming voice when the guards didn’t answer
back; they looked terrified, but a unanimous chorus followed soon
after. Everybody was perfectly clear about the semental in
question.

“Now, I want him in a new cell.” The
Priestess shot a last look at the guard and then turned her head to
address the rest of the group. “Make sure you don’t kill him until
I order so, or you’ll follow his fate.” Then the Priestess did
something Mauricio wasn’t expecting. She looked at him. Her eyes
locked his in a stare that sent shivers down his spine, and then
she turned to face the guards again. “You should be thankful that a
slave tested your security system. At least
I
realized my
guards aren’t
guarding
enough.”

He stood there in his corner, hoping that
she would leave soon. He wanted to faint. The
Holy Priestess
had looked at
him
and he was still alive. The realization
that he wasn’t going to be killed any time soon hit him hard. He
felt a physical blow to his stomach and vomited the entire meager,
gooey meal on the floor.

“You’ll take better care of the sementals
under your jurisdiction.” The Priestess didn’t flinch at the
spectacle. She just stepped aside and left, after giving another
pitiful look at the guard whose face was greener than
Mauricio’s.

Mauricio found that he liked his new cell.
The floor is dry; there isn’t mold on the wall; it isn’t cold;
and the bed isn’t a slab of hard rock
, he thought when he took
stock of the place.
And, what is that? A window?
It was a
small rectangular hole in the wall with metal bars, but he had
never had a window in any of his cells before and thought it was
the most beautiful thing. During the first week in his new
residence, he spent all of his time staring at the light coming
from outside.
Outside.
I wish I could see what’s beyond
this wall.
He imagined the sun illuminating the field workers’
long days. He had heard the men complaining about rain and wind,
but he couldn’t understand what they meant. Images of beautiful,
colorful things formed in his mind. He only knew life inside a
series of dark cells that had changed from time to time—sometimes
they were warmer, sometimes colder, but they remained always the
same: colorless. He longed for colors and fresh air.

Mauricio looked at the window high on the
wall, wishing he could move his bed closer to use as a step, but it
was bolted on the floor.
Great view, nonetheless
. The light
changed constantly during the day and disappeared at night.
Mauricio never grew tired of looking at the way the light moved on
the floor from one corner of his small cell to the other. Sometimes
the light was brighter, especially in the morning, other times it
was warm and yellow. From the open window, the outside world slowly
started pouring inside, and Mauricio discovered what the wind felt
like when it blew through the metal bars.
It’s not that bad,
he thought.
I like the sound of it.
He also grew accustomed
to the whispers of the field workers coming back at night.
Today
was good—they seem happy
, or,
Today wasn’t great—they are
complaining more than usual
. He started assessing the day
depending on the field workers’ mood.

He came to enjoy the singing of the birds
first thing in the morning, and after a while, he was even able to
recognize the sound of droplets of rain hitting the outside wall.
And, once, the wind brought the rain inside his cell. He touched
the small, wet tears and laughed.
I wish I could walk outside
and be drenched by it, so I’d know how it feels on my skin.

Then, one night, another sound was channeled
inside his cell—a voice he dreamed of every waking moment. Mauricio
would have recognized her voice among a chorus of feminine ones,
but she sang alone that night and every night after that. The first
time he heard her, Mauricio thought he was dreaming. The girl’s
voice was as crystalline and fresh as he remembered. She sang
lullabies, and sometimes she told children’s tales with her soft
voice. Mauricio knew what lullabies and tales were because of his
father; her songs took him back to the time when he was just a
scared little boy and his father soothed his fears with his voice.
Mauricio cried for several nights, remembering everything he had
lost, and he hated her for that.

But, every morning, he woke up with a
longing he had never felt before. She made him sad with her songs,
but she also made him feel alive. He couldn’t get enough of that
high. For once in his life, he had something to look forward to.
Every day, long after the field workers had come back for their
daily rest, when the square of light on his wall became a soft
shade of yellow and then disappeared, Mauricio waited for her. She
normally came out as soon as the darkness filled his cell. Mauricio
could hear her short steps, light on the gravel, and after a few
minutes, she would start tuning her voice with several scales. He
thought that the girl had the most beautiful voice in the whole
world.

One night, Mauricio impatiently waited for
the darkness to enclose his cell, but the girl didn’t come. He
stood there, thinking that every second lasted an hour and hoping
to hear her steps breaking the silence. His eyes started watering
and his head lolled to one side, but he still waited. He woke up
the next morning, sore and crouched on the floor in the same
position he had been sitting in. His mood didn’t improve during the
day and he failed to comply with his only task.

The guard assigned to him, a tall and wispy
brunette, the new face who had replaced the one the Priestess had
rebuked publicly, didn’t beat him—Priestess’ orders—but managed to
let half of his lunch fall on the floor of his cell.

I won’t give you the pleasure to see me
on all fours, scooping my meal off the ground.
He slowly ate
what was left on the plate; then he looked at the guard in
defiance. His stomach was aching with hunger, but he sat on the bed
and let the food go bad before his eyes. His dinner portion was
even smaller than lunch. Mauricio didn’t say anything. As a slave,
he could only control the way he accepted the adversities dealt
him.

The square of light moved on the floor of
Mauricio’s cell and his heart started pounding. When the air became
colder and the night bugs started chirping and clicking, he could
barely stand still. He stood up and sat down dozens of times.
Finally, the first shades of the night obscured the cell’s walls.
Mauricio forced his body to stay still. Seconds, minutes, hours,
all passed in a painful silence, but he refused to admit that he
was going to spend the night alone again. Hours later, hungry and
tired, he laid his head on the bed and started singing softly to
lessen his pain. The following day was a replay of the first one.
He didn’t fill the transparent cup. The tall guard was annoyed. His
stomach paid the consequences.

The third night came and Mauricio lay on his
bed and closed his eyes tightly. When the square of light passed on
his face and then disappeared beyond the wall, he felt the ache
rise in his chest. He was also lightheaded. He had eaten close to
nothing in the last two days and the pain devouring his stomach was
growing stronger. Mauricio started singing, as he had the night
before, and he lost himself in the act.

“You have a beautiful voice,” the girl said
from outside.

At first Mauricio thought he was imagining
things. Hunger did that to him sometimes. He was also very tired
and his eyes didn’t want to open. He turned to one side of the bed
and resumed singing.

“Where did you learn how to sing so well?”
the girl asked.

Mauricio fought to open his eyes and sat on
the bed. His head swayed one way and the other.

“You are a slave,” the girl said.

Mauricio thought that it was the stupidest
thing to say.
I have a man’s voice. What else can I be, if not a
slave?

“I'm not going to report you, if you talk to
me.” The girl sounded cheerful.

Mauricio couldn’t believe this conversation
was happening, but he could hear his heart beating in his throat
already.

“I really like your voice. I wouldn’t do
anything to put you in any trouble,” the girl said, seriously
now.

“I like your voice, too,” Mauricio managed
to say in a whisper.

“What did you say?” the girl asked and her
voice sounded closer. She was probably standing right under the
wall of Mauricio’s cell.

“I like to hear you sing,” Mauricio said
slightly louder.